Friday, December 20, 2024
This devotion is the written accompaniment to a video Advent message that can be viewed on our YouTube Channel by clicking HERE.
Deuteronomy 8:7-10
7 For the Lord your God is bringing you into a good land, a land with flowing streams, with springs and underground waters welling up in valleys and hills, 8 a land of wheat and barley, of vines and fig trees and pomegranates, a land of olive oil and honey, 9 a land where you may eat bread without scarcity, where you will lack nothing, a land whose stones are iron and from whose hills you may mine copper. 10 You shall eat your fill and bless the Lord your God for the good land that God has given you. (NRSV)
I’m sure you have noticed how food seems to dominate our lives through the holiday season. From late October through to New Year’s Day, our news feed is filled with recipes from main dishes to delicious snacks. The posts, pictures, recipes and reviews all encourage us to eat our fill and more.
Today’s text is filled with food as well. Seven foods, to be exact, that are to be revered and remembered as God’s special gifts to God’s people – signs of God’s providential love made visible in a new land so different from the wilderness the Israelites have been wandering in for years.
I always chuckle when I read through this list and find pomegranates. Pomegranates, really God, pomegranates? Of all the many and varied fruits, vegetables or grains that might have been listed, we find pomegranates. Not an item normally found on weekly shopping lists. But actually, pomegranates have been symbolic of God’s love poured out and made visible throughout history. As a reminder of God’s providence, they were woven into the robes the Israelite priests wore when they entered the temple, it’s said that they decorated the top of the pillars on Solomon’s Temple. They were found in medieval religious art work, the top shaped like a crown, and cut open so that the seeds, bursting out, are seen as Christ’s love poured out for our salvation.
What a wonderful image and metaphor for God’s love made visible – a pomegranate filled with seeds, each wrapped in a little pocket of wonderful, nutritious, delicious juice. Seeds that promise new life, juice that quenches our thirst and strengthens us, visible reminders of God’s love.
There is one more part in the text, however, that is important. Don’t forget, when you get all settled down and get all comfortable, don’t forget – Remember! Using these foods: wheat, barley, figs, vines, olives, honey and pomegranates, remember. All of these are to be reminders of how we are to give thanks for the providence of God. It’s easy to get wrapped up in the busyness of the holidays, to indulge in the many wonderful foods that we are offered and to forget that we are to remember the blessings and gifts of God’s love poured out and made visible for us in the birth of a baby and the love offered so freely. So, maybe add a pomegranate to your shopping list this Advent, and savor a visible sign of invisible grace poured out.
Reverend Julie Cory
Chair, Commission On Ministry, Team 2